In my CSUN presentation this year I wanted to talk about what I think is the minimum amount of code that web designers should understand to best embed accessibility into their work.
Should web designers be able to code? is a question that has been debated for years with, extremes of viewpoint from designers being fully capable developers to designers shouldn’t touch code at all.
My opinion is, like most people’s, somewhere in the middle. Understanding the building blocks of web development and a little bit about how CSS and JavaScript can impact accessibility, positively and negatively, is important.
The list of things I think web designers need to have some understanding of covers:
- Structure and Semantics
- Content order
- Interactions
For example, a web designer needs to know how headings and landmark roles are implemented in HTML to be able to properly structure a page.
My slides on Accessible Code for Web Designers are available to read online or download.